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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoCourtney Hergesheimer | DispatchDavid Roseman shows the honeysuckle that volunteers will attack along the Alum Creek Trail. The fast-growing plant can obstruct the trail and suppresses more-desirable plants.

Honeysuckle, an invasive and stubborn shrub, continues to keep volunteers and cities busy as it
takes over the edges of recreation trails.

“It’s terrible and it’s insidious. It doesn’t belong here,” said David Roseman, with a group
called Friends of Alum Creek and Tributaries.

Roseman and dozens of volunteers, with help from Otterbein University, the Sierra Club and the
city of Columbus, plan to spend hours on Saturday chopping away honeysuckle along the Alum Creek
Trail. They’ll work on a quarter-mile stretch near I-270 and the border of Westerville and
Columbus.

The group organizes several events each year to clear out invasive species, for which the
honeysuckle has become a poster child.

There are over 30 miles of biking and walking paths in Westerville that have been overrun by
honeysuckle, said Doug Vineyard, the city’s parks superintendent.

“We’ve spent a fair amount of our time trying to get rid of it,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll
ever eradicate it completely. It’s a matter of controlling it where you can.”

Parks employees work on honeysuckle-related issues several times a month. They focus much of
their attention on clearing out bike paths, Vineyard said, so the bushes don’t whip cyclists in the
face or shins as they ride by.

And the more trails there are, the more the shrubs will grow. Honeysuckle doesn’t normally grow
in the dark, so it thrives in the swaths of partial sunlight along trails bordering wooded
areas.

Roseman has seen some of the plants growing up to 12 feet high.

“What’s incredible is how quickly this stuff grows,” he said. “You can almost see it.”

Aside from the nuisance it creates along trails, the aggressive shrubs suppress other plants.
Roseman said he’s still amazed to see native plants and flowers that spring up along a trail after
the honeysuckle is cleared out.

Over in Bexley, Mayor Ben Kessler has pulled up a few bushes himself. The city has an annual
cleanup day in the spring when volunteers and recreation employees tackle invasive species along
the city’s trails.

Columbus has a staff member dedicated solely to eradicating the shrubs. Saturday’s event is the
first at which volunteers will have the help of a city employee. They’ll have access to a chipper
and truck, Roseman said.

“The vast majority of the trail either has it or will, but more and more people are getting out
and noticing it,” he said. “It’s amazing when we clear it out and suddenly people realize, ‘Oh,
there’s a river there.’ ”